When Ranked-Choice Voting Comes to New York City, Expect More Voter Participation, Not Radical Changes

New York City residents voted overwhelmingly last night to approve ranked-choice voting for many local elections, making it the largest community in the United States to make this shift away from winner-take-all elections. More than 73 percent of voters said yes to the change.

But New York is not the first city to implement ranked-choice, and it’s worth taking note of how it’s playing out elsewhere. San Francisco uses ranked-choice voting in many local races, and right now it might be about to impact the results of the city’s district attorney election.

In a ranked-choice election, voters are asked to rank candidates in order of their preference rather than simply choosing the one they most want to see win. If a single candidate gets a majority of the votes, that candidate wins, just like in more traditional voting systems. If the candidate only gets a plurality of the vote in a race with more than two candidates, that’s when the ranking system kicks in. The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated from the race, then the votes are retabulated. For any ballot that selected the eliminated candidate as the first choice, their second choice is used instead. The votes are recounted and then, once again, the results mandate that somebody get a majority—not just a plurality—of the votes to be named the winner. Depending on the number of races, it can take several tallies before a winner is determined.

San Francisco voters are electing a new district attorney. Incumbent D.A. George Gascón has vacated the position to run for D.A. in Los Angeles County. There’s a four-way race to replace him. After the first round of votes last night, Chesa Boudin, a defense attorney big on reforms (he’s played a major role in state efforts to eliminate cash bail) was in the lead over interim D.A. Suzy Loftus. Boudin was ahead of Loftus 32.9 percent to 30.9 percent. Under ranked-choice rules, because that’s not a majority, Boudin is not yet the winner of the race.

When the votes were retabulated after eliminating candidates Leif Dautch and Nancy Tung, it seems more of the voters who supported Dautch and Tung favored Loftus over Boudin. The current tally has Loftus ahead 50.13 percent to 49.87 percent. If those numbers hold, Loftus has the majority required to be named the winner. There are still mail-in ballots to count, so the race is still too close to call.

But in the end, ranked-choice voting might yank Boudin’s victory away. This is a feature, not a bug. And it’s honestly not that different from having runoff elections that could have resulted in the same outcome. But ranked-choice voting puts it all together in one election, saving time and money and encouraging voter participation. It helps avoid the problem of vote-splitting in races with candidates with similar positions. It allows third-party candidates to run for office without being seen (often incorrectly) as spoilers. FairVote, the nonpartisan organization pushing for the adoption of ranked-choice voting, notes that turnout often plunges in local elections that have a primary with many candidates and then a runoff between the top contenders. Ranked-choice voting allows for it all to happen at once.

All of which is to say that ranked-choice voting won’t necessarily result in certain types of election outcomes. Fox News’ coverage of New York’s vote emphasizes that uber-progressive Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and presidential candidate Andrew Yang support ranked-choice voting. But in San Francisco, the rankings are actually pulling in favor of the more centrist choice—Loftus is promising a focus on fighting property crimes and is creating a special team to target car burglaries. Don’t assume that ranked-choice voting is necessarily going to pull election results in radical directions.

More from Reason on ranked-choice voting here and here.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Cvu4xn
via IFTTT

Legal aspects of the GEDmatch warrant

The New York Times reports:

For police officers around the country, the genetic profiles that 20 million people have uploaded to consumer DNA sites represent a tantalizing resource that could be used to solve cases both new and cold. But for years, the vast majority of the data have been off limits to investigators. The two largest sites, Ancestry.com and 23andMe, have long pledged to keep their users’ genetic information private, and a smaller one, GEDmatch, severely restricted police access to its records this year.

Last week, however, a Florida detective announced at a police convention that he had obtained a warrant to penetrate GEDmatch and search its full database of nearly one million users. Legal experts said that this appeared to be the first time a judge had approved such a warrant, and that the development could have profound implications for genetic privacy.

“That’s a huge game-changer,” said Erin Murphy, a law professor at New York University. “The company made a decision to keep law enforcement out, and that’s been overridden by a court. It’s a signal that no genetic information can be safe.”

I ended up tweeting a long thread about the legal issues in the case, and I figured I would also blog those thoughts here.  So here’s my Twitter thread, slightly modified for blog format.

First, it’s worth pointing out that the facts are not yet fully known. A detective applied for and obtained a warrant, and the company did what the warrant said the company had to without challenging it. We don’t have a copy of the warrant, and there has been no litigation about it.

Here’s what we do know about the facts.  Almost million people have uploaded DNA profiles to GEDmatch to enable anyone to search the profiles. When the police started searching the database for law enforcement reasons, GEDmatch enacted a new policy: The police can’t do the same searches that the public can.

Under the policy, if you or I want to search GEDmatch, we can. But if police officers want to search it, they have to tell GEDmatch that they are police officers.  GEDmatch then only lets the officers search the profiles of users that have affirmatively opted in to having their profiles searched by the police. It’s sort of like a bar or restaurant putting up a sign saying that police aren’t welcome. Anyone can enter except for the police, who have to declare they are the police and then can’t go inside.

According to the story, a Florida detective wanted to search the same database as anyone else could.  Presumably he could have gone undercover and pretended he was not a detective, as on the Internet, no one know you’re a cop.  Instead, the detective obtained a warrant requiring GEDmatch to “override the privacy settings” of GEDmatch and let him search like a civilian.

In July, [the detective] asked a judge in the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida to approve a warrant that would let him override the privacy settings of GEDmatch’s users and search the site’s full database of 1.2 million users. After Judge Patricia Strowbridge agreed, Detective Fields said in an interview, the site complied within 24 hours. He said that some leads had emerged, but that he had yet to make an arrest. He declined to share the warrant or say how it was worded.

It’s not clear from the story what “override the privacy settings” means. I would guess it just means that GEDmatch let the detective’s police-marked accounts do what regular civilian accounts do. To continue the physical analogy, it’s like a warrant allowing an officer to enter a bar or restaurant that has a “police not welcome” sign, to make sure that the officer wasn’t committing a trespass by violating the policy indicated on the sign.

What to make of this as a legal matter? The Times story presents this as a radical new warrant, with ground-breaking implications. I am less sure.

First, it’s not obvious to me that a warrant is needed. Granted, if an officer went undercover and did the full query, it would be a TOS violation. And ironically, Florida is in the 11th Circuit, the one federal circuit that has said (wrongly, I should add) that TOS violations also violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). But there’s an express exception in the CFAA for law enforcement investigations, 18 U.S.C. 1030(f), so the CFAA probably couldn’t limit such a query. Given that, it’s not obvious to me that a warrant is needed under current law if the officer goes undercover and just signs up as a civilian and searches that way.

Here the officer obtained a warrant, of course. But was it legal, and if not, who could challenge it?  To be legal, the officer would need to show probable cause that there would be evidence of the crime picked up by the query, and to limit the search for that evidence. And it would need to describe with particularity the place to be searched, perhaps the GEDmatch database itself.

I would think that is doable under the Fourth Amendment. It may seem pretty broad to say that the entire database is the place to be searched, but I suspect that could be readily limited: The warrant should limit the place to be searched to the interface of GEDmatch that any member of the public sees and can access.  That way, it’s clear from the warrant that all the warrant does is give the police the same access that all the rest of us have. Using the physical analogy, it just lets the officer enter the bar or restaurant so there is no trespass in light of the policy that police aren’t welcome.

The net effect would be to impose a probable cause warrant requirement on accessing the public database, and to limit government queries to instances when the government can show probable cause to believe that there would be info relating to that one DNA profile.

In terms of who could challenge the warrant if it’s invalid, I think GEDmatch could have challenged its part assisting with the warrant. But it didn’t do that.  That’s perhaps understandable as a legal matter, as I doubt that challenge would have gone so far given that the detective presumably could have executed the warrant without GEDmatch’s assistance (by creating a civilian account and then searching).

The other way to challenge the warrant would have been on a motion to suppress if the search ends up being successful.   But that’s unlikely to get very far for a number of reasons, most importantly standing. It’s unlikely that the defendant’s own DNA profile would be in the database.  And if it is, the defendant would have uploaded the DNA profile voluntarily for everyone to search, likely eliminating Fourth Amendment rights under the third party doctrine. A defendant could try to argue that the GEDmatch policy created a reasonable expectation of privacy because it allowed in all members of the public but excluded police, but that seems like an uphill battle.  And that’s only standing: Once standing is established, the defendant would need to show not just that the warrant was invalid but that the violation was clear under the good faith exception, at least assuming it’s in a jurisdiction that recognizes the good faith exception.

Finally, I realize that some readers may be upset that I am only discussing the legal questions raised by this fact pattern, instead of the many other issues it raises.  That’s true, but it’s the legal issues that seemed particularly interesting to me based on the story.  For my broader views about government queries of DNA databases, see my 2018 post, Tentative Thoughts on the Use of Genealogy Sites to Solve Crimes.

 

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/36HGxeU
via IFTTT

SEC’s Clayton Slashes Investor Safeguards To Entice More Companies To Go Public

SEC’s Clayton Slashes Investor Safeguards To Entice More Companies To Go Public

It looks as though the Securities and Exchange Commission isn’t happy enough just allowing CEOs like Elon Musk to retain their C-suite position after committing egregious frauds like faking the largest buyout in history. The commission, under Jay Clayton, continues to make life easier for corporations while making protecting investors a second priority. 

Since Jay Clayton took over as head of the SEC, 17 changes have been made and 9 more have been proposed, that are part of a broad push to help “reverse a 20-year decline in U.S. public company listings”, according to Reuters. The changes include modernizing disclosures and cutting regulatory costs for companies – and just making life easier for public companies in general.

This, of course, is not without its down side: these new rules will weaken investor safeguards or diminish their rights. 

Anna Pinedo, a partner at law firm Mayer Brown said: “Under Clayton’s leadership, the Securities and Exchange Commission has been quietly chipping away at an array of rules, many quite technical in nature. Although individually these haven’t gotten much attention, in aggregate the SEC’s rulemaking agenda under Clayton adds up to positive changes for public companies.”

SEC spokeswoman Natalie Strom responded: “The initiatives advanced under his leadership maintain or enhance investor protections, including by ensuring today’s investors receive the material information necessary to make investment decisions.”

Clayton was appointed by President Trump and presented with a mandate to entice more companies to go public. Clayton promised to boost jobs and pensions by making it more attractive for small companies to sell shares on public exchanges, while at the same time committing to protect mom and pop investors. 

There has been a nearly 50% decline in the number of listed companies over the past two decades, which many companies attribute to increasing amounts of red tape. 

Tom Quaadman, executive vice president of the Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness said: “Clayton recognizes that the decline of public companies is a threat to the long-term competitiveness of the American economy. Clayton has taken a holistic step-by-step approach to reverse this situation.”

But by cutting companies disclosure requirements, investors are privy to less information.

Robert Jackson, one of five SEC commissioners who has opposed several measures, said: “The deregulatory agenda now advancing at the SEC is too often driven by lobbyist intuition rather than hard facts about the markets we oversee.”

One of Clayton’s proposals, for instance, will relax a requirement created by Congress in 2002 following the Enron scandal that forced companies with less than $100 million in revenue to have to have an independent auditor sign off on their financials. Another of his proposals would cap financial rewards for whistleblowers, reducing the incentive for company insiders to come forward with evidence of wrongdoing. This proposal may be “softened” by Clayton, as it has been fiercely attacked by corporate governance advocates. 

Clayton has also proposed changes that would limit the ability of shareholders to submit proposals on items like executive compensation to company management. 

And he has added oversight in some areas of the market. For instance, some measures that aim to simplify financial disclosures make it easier for investors to identify material information and gives investors more information on how company employees deal in their stock. He has also passed a package of measures this year that require stockbrokers to disclose potential conflicts of interest and the commissions that they earn. 

Cryptocurrency ventures have also slowed dramatically, as Clayton has said they should be regulated like stock offerings. 

Companies have been primarily choosing to stay private due to the costs associated with going public. Investment bankers, lawyers and auditors can all rack up bills in the millions and ongoing compliance ensures that these costs continue as a company stays public.

At the same time, deregulation in the private market since 1996 has made it easier for firms to raise money from private investors, leaving most Americans out of the equation. Over the last 5 years, at least $150 billion has been raised in private equity and debt placements, compared to $90 billion in the 5 years prior. 

And even though the total number of public companies is lower than 20 years ago, their total value has doubled, partly due to mergers and acquisitions. The IPO market has improved this year, as well. By the end of October, 37 small cap listings had generated between $300 million and $1 billion each from IPOs, on track to beat 2018’s tally of 39 listings. Many bankers have attributed this to a rising stock market.

Jim Cooney, head of equity capital markets for the Americas at Bank of America, said: “Although these new tools have been put in place and positively received, the continued strength of the broader market has been the primary factor driving IPO volumes.”

Clayton, who was seen as timid about making harsh changes upon his appointment, has been more inclined to push through measures despite Democratic dissent lately. Two of the five current commissioners are Democrats, while the rest were picked by Clayton. 

Commissioner Jackson, a Democrat in the minority at the SEC, concluded by saying that Clayton’s changes during his tenure have come with “real costs for real people”.

 


Tyler Durden

Wed, 11/06/2019 – 13:25

Tags
Business Finance

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2qyjjav Tyler Durden

When Ranked-Choice Voting Comes to New York City, Expect More Voter Participation, Not Radical Changes

New York City residents voted overwhelmingly last night to approve ranked-choice voting for many local elections, making it the largest community in the United States to make this shift away from winner-take-all elections. More than 73 percent of voters said yes to the change.

But New York is not the first city to implement ranked-choice, and it’s worth taking note of how it’s playing out elsewhere. San Francisco uses ranked-choice voting in many local races, and right now it might be about to impact the results of the city’s district attorney election.

In a ranked-choice election, voters are asked to rank candidates in order of their preference rather than simply choosing the one they most want to see win. If a single candidate gets a majority of the votes, that candidate wins, just like in more traditional voting systems. If the candidate only gets a plurality of the vote in a race with more than two candidates, that’s when the ranking system kicks in. The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated from the race, then the votes are retabulated. For any ballot that selected the eliminated candidate as the first choice, their second choice is used instead. The votes are recounted and then, once again, the results mandate that somebody get a majority—not just a plurality—of the votes to be named the winner. Depending on the number of races, it can take several tallies before a winner is determined.

San Francisco voters are electing a new district attorney. Incumbent D.A. George Gascón has vacated the position to run for D.A. in Los Angeles County. There’s a four-way race to replace him. After the first round of votes last night, Chesa Boudin, a defense attorney big on reforms (he’s played a major role in state efforts to eliminate cash bail) was in the lead over interim D.A. Suzy Loftus. Boudin was ahead of Loftus 32.9 percent to 30.9 percent. Under ranked-choice rules, because that’s not a majority, Boudin is not yet the winner of the race.

When the votes were retabulated after eliminating candidates Leif Dautch and Nancy Tung, it seems more of the voters who supported Dautch and Tung favored Loftus over Boudin. The current tally has Loftus ahead 50.13 percent to 49.87 percent. If those numbers hold, Loftus has the majority required to be named the winner. There are still mail-in ballots to count, so the race is still too close to call.

But in the end, ranked-choice voting might yank Boudin’s victory away. This is a feature, not a bug. And it’s honestly not that different from having runoff elections that could have resulted in the same outcome. But ranked-choice voting puts it all together in one election, saving time and money and encouraging voter participation. It helps avoid the problem of vote-splitting in races with candidates with similar positions. It allows third-party candidates to run for office without being seen (often incorrectly) as spoilers. FairVote, the nonpartisan organization pushing for the adoption of ranked-choice voting, notes that turnout often plunges in local elections that have a primary with many candidates and then a runoff between the top contenders. Ranked-choice voting allows for it all to happen at once.

All of which is to say that ranked-choice voting won’t necessarily result in certain types of election outcomes. Fox News’ coverage of New York’s vote emphasizes that uber-progressive Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and presidential candidate Andrew Yang support ranked-choice voting. But in San Francisco, the rankings are actually pulling in favor of the more centrist choice—Loftus is promising a focus on fighting property crimes and is creating a special team to target car burglaries. Don’t assume that ranked-choice voting is necessarily going to pull election results in radical directions.

More from Reason on ranked-choice voting here and here.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Cvu4xn
via IFTTT

Legal aspects of the GEDmatch warrant

The New York Times reports:

For police officers around the country, the genetic profiles that 20 million people have uploaded to consumer DNA sites represent a tantalizing resource that could be used to solve cases both new and cold. But for years, the vast majority of the data have been off limits to investigators. The two largest sites, Ancestry.com and 23andMe, have long pledged to keep their users’ genetic information private, and a smaller one, GEDmatch, severely restricted police access to its records this year.

Last week, however, a Florida detective announced at a police convention that he had obtained a warrant to penetrate GEDmatch and search its full database of nearly one million users. Legal experts said that this appeared to be the first time a judge had approved such a warrant, and that the development could have profound implications for genetic privacy.

“That’s a huge game-changer,” said Erin Murphy, a law professor at New York University. “The company made a decision to keep law enforcement out, and that’s been overridden by a court. It’s a signal that no genetic information can be safe.”

I ended up tweeting a long thread about the legal issues in the case, and I figured I would also blog those thoughts here.  So here’s my Twitter thread, slightly modified for blog format.

First, it’s worth pointing out that the facts are not yet fully known. A detective applied for and obtained a warrant, and the company did what the warrant said the company had to without challenging it. We don’t have a copy of the warrant, and there has been no litigation about it.

Here’s what we do know about the facts.  Almost million people have uploaded DNA profiles to GEDmatch to enable anyone to search the profiles. When the police started searching the database for law enforcement reasons, GEDmatch enacted a new policy: The police can’t do the same searches that the public can.

Under the policy, if you or I want to search GEDmatch, we can. But if police officers want to search it, they have to tell GEDmatch that they are police officers.  GEDmatch then only lets the officers search the profiles of users that have affirmatively opted in to having their profiles searched by the police. It’s sort of like a bar or restaurant putting up a sign saying that police aren’t welcome. Anyone can enter except for the police, who have to declare they are the police and then can’t go inside.

According to the story, a Florida detective wanted to search the same database as anyone else could.  Presumably he could have gone undercover and pretended he was not a detective, as on the Internet, no one know you’re a cop.  Instead, the detective obtained a warrant requiring GEDmatch to “override the privacy settings” of GEDmatch and let him search like a civilian.

In July, [the detective] asked a judge in the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida to approve a warrant that would let him override the privacy settings of GEDmatch’s users and search the site’s full database of 1.2 million users. After Judge Patricia Strowbridge agreed, Detective Fields said in an interview, the site complied within 24 hours. He said that some leads had emerged, but that he had yet to make an arrest. He declined to share the warrant or say how it was worded.

It’s not clear from the story what “override the privacy settings” means. I would guess it just means that GEDmatch let the detective’s police-marked accounts do what regular civilian accounts do. To continue the physical analogy, it’s like a warrant allowing an officer to enter a bar or restaurant that has a “police not welcome” sign, to make sure that the officer wasn’t committing a trespass by violating the policy indicated on the sign.

What to make of this as a legal matter? The Times story presents this as a radical new warrant, with ground-breaking implications. I am less sure.

First, it’s not obvious to me that a warrant is needed. Granted, if an officer went undercover and did the full query, it would be a TOS violation. And ironically, Florida is in the 11th Circuit, the one federal circuit that has said (wrongly, I should add) that TOS violations also violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). But there’s an express exception in the CFAA for law enforcement investigations, 18 U.S.C. 1030(f), so the CFAA probably couldn’t limit such a query. Given that, it’s not obvious to me that a warrant is needed under current law if the officer goes undercover and just signs up as a civilian and searches that way.

Here the officer obtained a warrant, of course. But was it legal, and if not, who could challenge it?  To be legal, the officer would need to show probable cause that there would be evidence of the crime picked up by the query, and to limit the search for that evidence. And it would need to describe with particularity the place to be searched, perhaps the GEDmatch database itself.

I would think that is doable under the Fourth Amendment. It may seem pretty broad to say that the entire database is the place to be searched, but I suspect that could be readily limited: The warrant should limit the place to be searched to the interface of GEDmatch that any member of the public sees and can access.  That way, it’s clear from the warrant that all the warrant does is give the police the same access that all the rest of us have. Using the physical analogy, it just lets the officer enter the bar or restaurant so there is no trespass in light of the policy that police aren’t welcome.

The net effect would be to impose a probable cause warrant requirement on accessing the public database, and to limit government queries to instances when the government can show probable cause to believe that there would be info relating to that one DNA profile.

In terms of who could challenge the warrant if it’s invalid, I think GEDmatch could have challenged its part assisting with the warrant. But it didn’t do that.  That’s perhaps understandable as a legal matter, as I doubt that challenge would have gone so far given that the detective presumably could have executed the warrant without GEDmatch’s assistance (by creating a civilian account and then searching).

The other way to challenge the warrant would have been on a motion to suppress if the search ends up being successful.   But that’s unlikely to get very far for a number of reasons, most importantly standing. It’s unlikely that the defendant’s own DNA profile would be in the database.  And if it is, the defendant would have uploaded the DNA profile voluntarily for everyone to search, likely eliminating Fourth Amendment rights under the third party doctrine. A defendant could try to argue that the GEDmatch policy created a reasonable expectation of privacy because it allowed in all members of the public but excluded police, but that seems like an uphill battle.  And that’s only standing: Once standing is established, the defendant would need to show not just that the warrant was invalid but that the violation was clear under the good faith exception, at least assuming it’s in a jurisdiction that recognizes the good faith exception.

Finally, I realize that some readers may be upset that I am only discussing the legal questions raised by this fact pattern, instead of the many other issues it raises.  That’s true, but it’s the legal issues that seemed particularly interesting to me based on the story.  For my broader views about government queries of DNA databases, see my 2018 post, Tentative Thoughts on the Use of Genealogy Sites to Solve Crimes.

 

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/36HGxeU
via IFTTT

Stellar 10Y Auction: Foreign Demand Surges; Biggest Stop Through In 12 Months

Stellar 10Y Auction: Foreign Demand Surges; Biggest Stop Through In 12 Months

One day after a blockbuster 3Y auction, moments ago the US Treasury sold $27 billion in 10Y paper in what was a stellar auction of US benchmark paper.

Starting at the top, the high yield of 1.809%, while notably above October’s 1.5900% following the sharp selloff in the past few days, stopped through the 1.8200% When Issued by 1.1bps, the biggest “stop through” in one year, since November 2018.

The Bid to Cover also was a notable improvement, rising from 2.43 to 2.49, far above the 2.36 six auction average, and the highest bid to cover since April.

Finally, the internals were the piece de resistance, with the Indirect takedown surging from 58.5% to 64.5%, the highest since June, and leaving Directs holding on to 12.4%, the lowest since May, while Dealers were left holding 23.1% of the paper, the lowest since June.

Overall, a stellar auction, and one which pushed intraday 10Y yields to session lows, now that the selloff across the curve appears to be over, with the yield on the benchmark US Treasury sliding from 1.86% to 1.81% after the auction.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 11/06/2019 – 13:14

Tags
Business Finance

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2NknuzI Tyler Durden

Watch: Chinese Social Credit Score Publicly Shames ‘Bad Citizen’ For Jaywalking

Watch: Chinese Social Credit Score Publicly Shames ‘Bad Citizen’ For Jaywalking

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A video out of China shows a citizen being publicly shamed and having his photo and ID card flashed up on a big screen for crossing the road on a red light.

“Chinese facial recognition system to discourage minor traffic violations. Cross the road when you shouldn’t and a picture of you with your name, ID card number pop up on the big screen for everyone to see,” tweeted Matthew Brennan.

The Communist country’s vast network of facial recognition surveillance cameras are being linked to citizen ID cards, producing the kind of dystopia that would make even George Orwell roll in his grave.

Under its social credit score system, China punishes people who criticize the government, as well as numerous other behaviors, including;

– Bad driving.
– Smoking on trains.
– Buying too many video games.
– Buying too much junk food.
– Buying too much alcohol.
– Calling a friend who has a low credit score .
– Having a friend online who has a low credit score.
– Posting “fake news” online.
– Visiting unauthorized websites.
– Walking your dog without a leash.
– Letting your dog bark too much.

Back in August, the Communist state bragged about how it had prevented 2.5 million “discredited entities” from purchasing plane tickets and 90,000 people from buying high speed train tickets in the month of July alone.

As we previously highlighted, Chinese citizens will also be forced to pass a facial recognition test to use the Internet.

Thank God here in the west, we don’t get publicly shamed, deplatformed and punished for our political opinions or perceived misbehavior.

Oh wait…

*  *  *

My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me disappeared forever. It is CRUCIAL that you support me. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 11/06/2019 – 13:10

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/34CxIS2 Tyler Durden

Family of Murder Victims Wants to Stop the Feds From Resuming Executions

“Yes, Daniel Lee damaged my life, but I can’t believe taking his life is going to change any of that,” said Earlene Peterson in a video asking President Donald Trump to grant her daughter and granddaughter’s killer, Daniel Lewis Lee, clemency:

Peterson’s plea comes about a month before Lee’s scheduled execution. Attorney General William Barr announced in July that the Department of Justice will resume executions after a hiatus of 16 years.

“I can’t see how executing Daniel Lee will honor my daughter in any way. In fact, [it’s] kind of like it dirties her name,” Peterson said. She believes Lee’s sentence ought to be reduced to life in prison without parole.

Barr’s idea of justice contradicts Peterson’s desires. Upon announcing that federal executions will resume, Barr said the government owes “it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system,” (which, in this case, was death, given that Lee was sentenced back in 1999). Barr’s belief apparently holds true even when the victim’s family says they don’t support the killer’s execution.

Daniel Lewis Lee faces execution in December.

In January 1996, Daniel Lewis Lee, a white supremacist, helped Chevie Kehoe murder William Mueller, Nancy Mueller, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell, in Tilly, Arkansas. Lee and Kehoe ambushed the family outside of their house, questioned the family about where they kept their money and guns, and proceeded to shoot them with a stun gun, cover their heads with plastic bags, and seal them with duct tape after finding $50,000 in cash, guns, and ammunition in the family’s house (William Mueller was a gun dealer who owned a collection of guns and ammunition). The pair then drove the bodies to the Illinois Bayou where they weighted them and threw them into the water.

Kehoe and Lee wanted the family’s cash and guns to fund a group called the “Aryan Peoples Republic” and establish a whites-only country in the Pacific Northwest.

On May 4, 1999, a jury convicted Kehoe and Lee of three capital murder counts, racketeering, and conspiracy to commit racketeering. The jury delivered a verdict of life in prison without parole to Kehoe. Lee, on the other hand, was sentenced to death on May 14 for committing the same crimes as Kehoe.

Peterson thinks that this outcome is unjust and has petitioned President Donald Trump—she voted for him in 2016 and plans to do so again—to grant Lee clemency. Lee is the first of five federal inmates on death row Barr is looking to execute. His execution is scheduled for December 9.

Lee ended up on federal death row instead of Arkansas’ death row because he was found guilty of conspiring to violate and violating the “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act” (RICO). RICO allows a case that would typically be prosecuted at the state level to be prosecuted by the federal government if an individual committed at least two instances of 35 potential crimes within 10 years while acting as part of an ongoing criminal organization (in this case, the Aryan Peoples Republic).

Peterson believes the jury’s prejudices led to Kehoe and Lee receiving different sentences.

“Chevie Kehoe was dressed very nicely, like a young businessman, and Daniel Lee was not,” Peterson said, noting that Lee was missing an eye and had a swastika tattooed on his neck. “He looked like an outlaw,” and “was instantly judged the minute he walked into the courtroom,” she says.

Both the presiding judge and the leading federal prosecutor in the joint trial, U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele and Dan Stripling, wrote separate letters to then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Attorney Christopher Thyer in 2014 expressing their disagreement with the difference in sentencing.

The federal death penalty has been in place since 1988, but only three people have been executed by the federal government in that time, most notably Timothy McVeigh in 2001. Nobody has been executed at the federal level since 2003.

The return of the federal death penalty brings with it a host of dangers. Most notably, it eliminates the possibility that inmates may later be exonerated when new evidence appears. Across the country, 166 people have been exonerated while on death row over the past 50 years.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2CjXgHy
via IFTTT

Trump Jr. Outs CIA Whistleblower Over Twitter

Trump Jr. Outs CIA Whistleblower Over Twitter

Drama ensued on Wednesday after Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a Breitbart News article which contained the name of the alleged Trump-Ukraine whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella.

The article, written by Breitbart senior investigative reporter New York Times bestselling author and Aaron Klein, details how Ciaramella was central to the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy – including the eventual signing of a $1 billion US loan guarantee after former VP Joe Biden pressured them into firing the guy investigating an energy company paying his son to sit on their board, Burisma Holdings.

In response to Trump Jr. tweeting Ciaramella’s name, journalist Yashar Ali (who worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign) contacted Don Jr., who told him “The outrage on this is BS. And those pretending that I would coordinate with The White House to send out a Breitbart link haven’t been watching my feed for a long time.”

Don Jr. then tweeted “The entire media is #Triggered that I (a private citizen) tweeted out a story naming the alleged whistleblower. Are they going to pretend that his name hasn’t been in the public domain for weeks now? Numerous people & news outlets including Real Clear Politics already ID’d him.”

Trump Jr.’s ‘outing’ of Ciaramella comes one day after Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he was considering releasing the whistleblower’s name, and claimed that he may be involved in Ukraine corruption.


Tyler Durden

Wed, 11/06/2019 – 12:49

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2qwAbOR Tyler Durden

Options Traders Abandon Hedges

Options Traders Abandon Hedges

Via Dana Lyons’ Tumblr,

Following the recent stock market breakout, stock options traders have significantly trimmed their hedges.

With the popular stock indices hanging near all-time highs for most of the year, one might think that stock sentiment would be extremely bullish. However, among the indicators that we monitor, we have observed very little evidence of unhealthy bullish extremes. That has made for an investing climate that is conducive to further market gains, including the recent, long-awaited breakout in the large-cap averages.

With the breakout, however, we may be seeing signs of traders letting their guard down, so to speak. At least one data point pertaining to the equity options market suggests that.

Options traders use calls to bet on market gains and use puts as protection against declines. When a disproportionate amount of volume is going into calls relative to puts, it generally means traders are very bullish – and potentially too complacent about risk. On Monday, we saw potential evidence of that. Via the CBOE, the ratio of total volume going into puts relative to calls registered its 2nd lowest reading in 2 years.

Ominously, the only lower reading occurred on January 23, 2018, just before a big decline.

Now, before folks get too alarmed, this is but one data point – and one day’s worth at that. Further, prior to 2 years ago, this series dropped to this low level, and lower, on a more frequent basis. However, it is one piece of evidence of complacency among the investment community that has predominantly been absent throughout the recent stock market strength.

*  *  *

So how alarmed are we about this data point? What would make us more alarmed, to the point of getting out of stocks — or going short? If you’re interested in an “all-access” pass to all of our charts, research and investment moves, please check out our site, The Lyons Share. You can follow our investment process and posture every day — including insights into what we’re looking to buy and sell and when. Thanks for reading!


Tyler Durden

Wed, 11/06/2019 – 12:40

Tags
Business Finance

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32q8e8O Tyler Durden